Statement on the Mumps outbreak in Maine:

The Maine Coalition for Vaccine Choice reminds the public that Merck, maker of the country's only Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine, is currently in federal court being sued by its own scientists who claim that the company submitted fraudulent efficacy data to the FDA in 2000 to gain re-approval for the MMRII, and the vaccine may be largely ineffective against the circulating mumps virus.

Our organization has notified the Maine CDC in person and in writing over the last two years of this potential fraud, and that those born since at least 2000 may be highly vulnerable to the disease, while believing that they are immunized. We have encouraged Maine CDC to make a plan for potential outbreaks in light of this matter. Those communications, and the response of Kenneth Albert of the CDC, can be read here:

During the 2015 legislative session, five vaccine bills were proposed, three of which attempted to increase the vaccine burden on children, and impinge on the rights of families to make uncoerced vaccine decisions for their children. One of those measures sought to add the Tdap vaccine to the required shots for 7th graders.

Mainers turned out in large numbers to oppose these new burdens on families, the three bills that assaulted family rights were defeated, and the only action ultimately passed by the legislature on vaccination was to approve part of a bill written by the Maine Coalition for Vaccine Choice to add information about the HHS Vaccine Injury Compensation Program to the Maine.gov web site.

For the Maine CDC to then wait a year and accomplish via rule making what they could not accomplish in the legislature because it was so strongly opposed by parents, can be interpreted as yet another bad faith move by Maine CDC, and further evidence that your agency does not take vaccine safety, or the rights and concerns of parents, seriously.

Mainers showed up to tell their government that their children were getting hurt, that their doctors were both denying their children's adverse events and failing to offer them medical help, that they could not get accurate information from their doctors on vaccine risks, that they were unable to get compensation from the VICP, that their families were experiencing a great deal of hardship due to vaccine injury and that they regretted participating in the vaccine program because, for them and their loved ones, it resulted in chronic illness, disability and death.

The Maine Coalition for Vaccine Choice pointed out the Maine medical system's serious shortcomings in addressing vaccine adverse events and injuries. Via their own testimony, those medical entities and individuals supporting these oppressive bills in Maine and fighting our bill to address the vaccine injury and informed consent problem, demonstrated that they knew so little about the vaccine program that they were advocating for, that only 1 in 20 could correctly identify the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. This includes the President of the Maine Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, who did not even know the name of the VICP, and the representative for the Maine Medical Association (an RN and an attorney), who, while opposing a bill mandating that providers know and use the VICP in practice, admitted that he didn't know what the VICP was. Only one physician who submitted testimony could differentiate the VICP, designed to replace the system where they could be sued for vaccine injury by getting compensation and care for those cases, from VAERS, a database to track vaccine safety that in no way helps those injured by vaccines.

Our organization has contacted your agency repeatedly in good faith, to try to garner your attention to the vaccine injury problem,and the lack of confidence in the vaccine program. This lack of confidence due to the negligence of the State of Maine in both working to prevent vaccine injury and in caring for those who are vaccine injured, will not go away. No help or information has been forth coming. In fact the agency arranged a discussion on what to do about vaccine resistant Mainers, and vaccine law at the University of Maine, and neither notified us of the event nor asked us to have any input on the subject. Family after family testified before the Maine Legislatures HHS committee to their serious unmet needs and hardships, with physicians and public health officials in attendance, and not one of them, or our organization, was contacted by anyone to see how they could provide help for those families.

There is no other issue in politics anywhere in this country, where those stakeholders most severely impacted by a policy are left out of policy discussions. Not veterans, not workers, not Native Americans, not even prisoners. But this is standard operating procedure for vaccine injury families, and those who believe their children are at risk for adverse reactions from vaccination. They are left out of policy decisions, and their questions, comments and pleas for help are ignored, PER PUBLIC HEALTH POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS.

This unjust treatment that our members have been receiving from state and federal health authorities has now been codified by The World Health Organization, which now formally teaches those in the health profession to refer to vaccine injury families as “Vaccine Deniers” and not to engage them. In their new publication, “Best practice guidance// How to respond to vocal vaccine deniers in public, First Edition1,” The WHO instructs them ONLY to engage them in public forms with the end goal being to convince others to vaccinate, and even then, only if they have had “media training.”

But rather than addressing the vaccine injury epidemic, and the complaints of parents, the Maine CDC has decided to continue to add the number of vaccines required for school children.

Further, it is being done by making the claim that adding the Tdap will “protect Maine students,” when the vaccine itself targets the toxin made by the bacteria, and does not prevent transmission of, or infection by pertussis, merely the symptoms of the infection. Further, likely because of the mutation of the organism, we are now seeing outbreaks that ONLY occur in the vaccinated2, leaving those unvaccinated for pertussis symptom free.

But what is most disturbing to our community is that there is so little concern for the safety of this vaccine, when severe brain damage, seizures and even death are known adverse outcomes of the shot.

Our medical adviser, Dr. Meryl Nass, will be following up with your agency to discuss the vaccine itself in greater detail.

The Maine Coalition for Vaccine Choice opposes these proposed changes, as the current vaccine program is dangerously aggressive, and the 7th Amendment rights of Mainers to sue for vaccine injury and death have been removed by the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act.

We oppose the changes because Maine pediatricians are not taught, and do not know, how to recognize Tdap vaccine adverse reactions, test to confirm the adverse reactions, or treat the adverse reactions.

We oppose the changes because the Maine CDC's response to our request to provide our organization with the name of a MaineCare participating physician in the state who is experienced and qualified to address vaccine adverse reactions was that they do not keep such information.

We oppose the changes because even those few families who manage to find out about, and file with the VICP, are almost always left uncompensated.

We oppose the changes because Maine CDC refuses to answer the vaccine safety, efficacy and policy questions that we submitted to them in 2015.

We oppose the changes because once a child is vaccine injured, that family is abandoned by State of Maine and its medical providers. They are, at best, on their own, and at worst, treated as an enemy and a bad parent.

We oppose the changes because the State of Maine does not take vaccine safety seriously.

At this time, Maine should be doing a very in-depth assessment of the current vaccine program to reform the way Mainers are vaccinated, implementing screening procedures for those who are at risk for vaccine injury, re assessing suspected vaccine injury cases, and assisting vaccine injured Mainers in acquiring compensation in the VICP.

As the current financial burden for vaccine injury falls on the state services, local school systems and families themselves, Maine should focus on shifting the burden back on the federal government, which removed Mainer's right to sue for adverse reactions, and assumed financial responsibility for these cases thirty years ago.

Further, to report that these charges will have zero fiscal impact is absurd. It assumes that there are zero adverse reactions, and continues with the same vaccine injury denialism that is tearing down faith in the vaccine program at an increasing rate.

Maine should not be doubling down on the current aggressive, negligent and damaging vaccine program. There is no current risk from these diseases that justifies increasing the risk of Tdap vaccine injuries to children. There is no system in place to even find these injuries when they occur to assess whether this policy change is one that improves or harms child health in Maine.

The Maine Coalition for Vaccine Choice opposes the changes because Maine needs to address the vaccine injury problem it has, before adding one more shot to a program that has likely passed the point where it does more harm than good.

In the coming months our organization will be releasing a white paper reviewing the gaps and problems Maine Immunization Program revealed by the 2015 legislative session and its aftermath. We hope that the state of Maine will reverse course and become as concerned with the lifelong disability and deaths being caused by the current program as it is with the short term, treatable illnesses like measles and pertussis that the program is focused on preventing.

During the vaccine push of 2015 in which the vaccine industry and legislators supporting it presented more than 100 bills across the country to remove and restrict the rights of families to decline vaccines, the discussions surrounding the bills in question showed plainly what families have been reporting for many years. Namely that physicians know little to nothing about vaccine injury and that the medical establishment and public health agencies promoting the vaccine program have no plan to care for the vaccine injured.

After failing to respond to the many questions that we have asked of the Maine Immunization Program, today they have confirmed what we already knew, that the vaccine program in Maine is a bad faith program that both ignores vaccine injury and fails to support Mainers in need who have been injured by their program.

For all their passion to see all children fully vaccinated according to the CDC schedule, they have no concern with helping those harmed and cannot give us the name of even ONE physician in the state that can assess and care for children experiencing adverse vaccine events. This clearly demonstrates that the program is not about health, it is about product sales.

They join the Maine Chapter of the American Acacemy of Pediatrics and the Maine Medical Association in failing to simply give us the name of a doctor who can help our children.

The events of this year have lead us to one conclusion. The standard of care for vaccine injury in Maine is medical neglect.The Maine Coalition for Vaccine Choice riterates our warning to those who choose to participate in the immunization program. Caveat Emptor.. buyer beware. Despite the claims of the Maine CDC, Maine AAP and MMA that they wish to "partner with parents," on vaccine issues, once you or your loved one suffers a vaccine injury, they will not be there for you. YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN.

Ms. Philbrick,As was testified to in the vaccine hearings in the Maine Legislature, because Maine physicians are not educated on federal guidelines for vaccine injuries, our families are unable to find qualified practitioners to provide competent medical assessment and care for our vaccine injured children.I have contacted both the Maine AAP and the Maine Medical Association to ask them for the names of their physicians who have expertise in this area. The Maine AAP responded to confirm receipt of my email, and declined to answer any of my questions. The Maine Medical Association did not respond at all, even after a follow up email was sent.I have also contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Health Resources Services Administration's, Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, and neither provides information on how to find a qualified doctor in our state.Can you please provide the name and contact information for any and all physicians in Maine who are experienced in assessing, diagnosing, and treating vaccine adverse reactions, and who will accept MaineCare.Thank you,--

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On October 14, 2015, a complaint was filed with Maine DHHS against MaineHealth for making egregiously false claims about immuizations, a product line that they sell to the public:

To the Maine Department of Health and Human Services

Division of Licensing and Regulatory Services

Complaint against MaineHealth for making false product safety claims on pharmaceuticals sold and administered by their corporation.

I would like to file a complaint against MaineHealth for making fraudulent statements concerning one of their product lines.

MaineHealth, both on the VaxMaineKids.org web site and during an interview on MPBN on December 1, 2014, have made false vaccine safety claims. I have contacted VaxMaineKids, MaineHealth and MPBN to ask for a retraction and correction of the false marketing messages that they are issuing to the public, but none of the organizations will properly address the issue.

VaxMaineKids.org makes the false claims on their web site that:

“THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT VACCINES CAUSE AUTISM.”

And that, “No other medical study anywhere in the world has ever found a link between vaccines and autism. Not one.” (http://www.vaxmainekids.org/mythbuster-series-autism/)

During an email exchange last summer with Cassandra Grantham, Program Director of Child Health at MaineHealth, initiated by Ms. Grantham after I had written about her work, I corrected the misinformation, sending VaxMaineKids a list with dozens of studies that link vaccines and autism. (The list now stands at 108 research papers. http://www.scribd.com/doc/220807175/86-Research-Papers-Supporting-the-Vaccine-Autism-Link) Ms. Grantham failed to correct the false claims on the MaineHealth web site, and wrote that she was no longer interested in discussing the matter any further with me.

Ms. Grantham, representing Maine Health, made further false claims on December 1, 2014 on MPBN's Maine Calling, when she claimed that there were multiple studies comparing populations of unvaccinated children to children fully vaccinated according to the CDC schedule that have found no increased risk in autism among fully vaccinated children.

In fact, no such research exists, as testified to by Dr. Colleen Boyle, Director of CDC's National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities during the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee hearing 1 in 88 Children: A Look Into the Federal Response to Rising Rates of Autism on November 29, 2012. In response to a question whether or not autism risk had been studied in vaccinated v. unvaccinated children Dr. Boyle stated, "We have not studied vaccinated v. unvaccinated."

UPDATED 10/15/15: The Portland Press Herald has erroneously reported that Kenneth Albert supported some form of LD 471 in the future, and our response has been amended to reflect this new information. This is one of dozens of examples of false, incomplete and misleading information on vaccines and vaccine policy reported by Joe Lawlor and the Portland Press Herald over the past year. In light of that, the Maine Coalition for Vaccine Choice frankly should have known better than to take the paper's reporting at face value, and should have checked with Mr. Albert's office first to confirm his position before responding. Apologies to Mr. Albert, and we will endeavor to fact check any such claims by the PPH in the future.

Unfortunately the bulk of our complaints against Maine CDC still stand.

The Maine CDC's response and additional discussion can be found below.

Kenneth Albert And The Maine CDC, Supports The Removal Of The Vaccine Choice Rights Of Parents, and Denial Of Informed Consent In Vaccination, While Refusing To Meet With The Parents Of Vaccine Injured Children To Address Their Questions And Concerns *

Last spring, The Maine Coalition for Vaccine Choice, Maine's only vaccine safety/vaccine choice watchdog group, submitted a list of questions to the Maine Immunization Program, The Maine Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Maine Medical Association on behalf of the Maine parents that are opting out of one or more vaccines. All three organizations * have refused to answer these questions and refused to meet with us. At the same time they are pushing legislation that would require our members to be lectured on vaccine safety by a physician, whose systematic and widespread ignorance of federal vaccine injury guidelines is among our chief complaints. (* Kenneth Albert has issued a statement in response to the Portland Press Herald article saying that he does not endorse the legislation to restrict vaccine exemption rights, so while all three organizations are refusing to meet with families, only the Maine AAP and the MMA are pushing legislation to coerce parents into vaccinating against their better judgement.)

These basic questions, which all Maine citizens have the right to know, include:

- What is the vaccine injury rate in Maine?

- May we have the name of a physician in Maine who is experienced and qualified in properly diagnosing and treating vaccine adverse events so that we may have children having serious reactions assessed and treated quickly, and who can correctly document reactions for those who are permanently injured so they can be compensated by the HHS Vaccine Injury Compensation Program?

- Why has the link to the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program listed on the Maine DHHS web site been misnamed as the "National Vaccine Compensation Program," as it prevents parents and physicians from finding information on the program that they need, and when will that be changed to comply with the new Maine law requiring the program be listed?

- Can the AAP reconcile for us their conflicting testimony before the Maine Legislature that "vaccines are safe," and that, "vaccines are mostly safe" with that of their testimony before the US Supreme Court that all FDA approved vaccines are "unavoidably unsafe?"

- Physicians in Maine are almost completely ignorant of the federal vaccine injury guidelines. Your own organizations have submitted testimony to the Maine Legislature in 2015 showing you didn't even know of the existence Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, that is the federal repository for vaccine injury information. What are your organizations doing to educate yourselves and physicians in Maine on federal guidelines for vaccine injury so that doctors can properly recognize them in their patients, prevent further damage and provide appropriate care?

- When physicians or medical groups give false vaccine safety information to patients, what is the process by which we can go about having them held accountable and properly trained on evidence based vaccine risk information?

In addition to his lack of willingness to answer or questions, Kenneth Albert's last email to us in response to our request for basic information about the Maine Immunization Program ended by inferring that if we wanted our questions answered, we should file a lawsuit.

Further, Maine DHHS has ignored complaints filed by us against Maine medical leaders that are providing blatantly false information about vaccine safety in order to increase their vaccine sales. The Maine Coalition for Vaccine Choice has refiled our complaints with DHHS today.

How does the Maine CDC get away with refusing to answer the questions of parents of vaccine injured children, and then push laws that presuppose that these questions have been answered and are readily available from anyone who qualified to administer a vaccine? (correction: while Maine CDC is refusing to answer questions, they are not pushing the law they were accused of supporting.)

If Mr. Albert, the Maine AAP, or the Maine Medical association were truly interested in providing Mainers with, “Informed Consent” in vaccination, they would meet with the Maine parents who are declining one or more vaccines and answer their questions, address their concerns, and fix the massive holes in vaccine safety and care for the vaccine injured that exist in the state of Maine.

Marijuana growers in Maine have a standing forum where they can meet with law enforcement officials to discuss problems and policy, but the Maine DHHS refuses provide any forum for parents of vaccine injured children, or parents concerned that their child is at risk for vaccine injury.

Dozens of Maine families appeared before the Maine Legislature's Health and Human Services Committee in May to testify against LD 471, the bill being supported by Kenneth Albert. (Again, Mr. Albert does not support this bill.) These families also stayed long into the evening to testify on behalf of LD 1076, a vaccine consumer protection bill that would require: Maine physicians to know and use the US federal guidelines on vaccine injury, Maine DHHS to have a information program to help and support families of vaccine injured children and connect them with the services and medical support that they need, and to create a complaint process for families to access when false claims or malpractice occurs regarding vaccination.

After a full day of testimony by parents which outlined extreme negligence in medical care with regard to adverse vaccine reaction, not one parent was contacted by any of the organizations supporting higher vaccine rates through patient intimidation to offer them help or information.

These stories included children's unmet medical needs following severe vaccine reactions, parental inability to get physicians to help them receive compensation through the federal vaccine injury compensation program, a medical examiner who refused to investigate the likely vaccine death of a recently vaccinated infant, being bullied in doctors' offices to vaccinate and being fired from medical practices, even when safety questions were not answered, and massive corruption scandals unfolding in the CDC's National Immunization Program.

We have asked for sound, evidence based, detailed information on vaccine safety and have been refused. We have asked for information on how to help our sick children and have been refused. We asked that doctors be educated on the HHS vaccine injury guidelines and have been refused.

It has been stated, and bears repeating in light of the current actions of medical officials in Maine, that once you have a vaccine injured child, you are on your own.

It is clear that since Congress removed the rights of Americans to sue pharmaceutical companies and medical entities for vaccine injury and death, that vaccine interests have decided to abuse that legal loop hole to deny even basic informed consent rights to families. The only legal standing that vaccine injury families have in Maine is the right to appear before Committees in the Maine Legislature for three minutes, and tell our stories.

The bill that was rejected this year is clearly just a bill to force families to be bullied by medical providers on an individual basis in private, as the organizations that support it won't answer our collective questions in public.

In fact we are not invited to the discussion over the removal of our rights. No invitation or announcement of Mr. Albert's event at the Maine School of Law was issued to us so that we could even appear in the audience and ask questions that impact the removal of our rights or the care of our injured children, much less share the dais to discuss our true complaints against the current vaccine program.

The Maine Coalition for Vaccine Choice, which represents more than 500 Maine families working to retain their right to informed consent in vaccination, issues a standing, open invitation to Governor LePage, Kenneth Albert, the Maine Immunization Program, the Maine Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Maine Medical Association and the Maine Law Policy Group to meet with us publicly, so that they may hear the concerns and answer the questions of the those Mainers who no longer adhere to the US Centers for Disease Control recommended vaccine schedule, the most aggressive vaccine schedule in the world.

You should not be having policy meetings about us, without us.

Ginger Taylor, MSDirectorMaine Coalition for Vaccine Choice

Follow up:

This morning we received this response from Maine's Public Health Information Officer, and engaged in the following exchange:

Subject:

Vaccination story

Date:

Thu, 15 Oct 2015 12:49:58 +0000

From:

Martins, John A <
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>

To:

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<
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Good morning, Ginger:

You may have seen Joe Lawlor’s story this morning. This is the letter to the editor we sent to the Press Herald to clarify Ken’s positon and his discussion with the reporter.

Thank you,

John Martins

Public Health Information Officer/

Director of Internal and Program Communications

(207) 287-5347

To the editor:

I want to clarify misleading comments in Tuesday’s article entitled: Maine CDC director supports strengthening state’s vaccine laws. It is accurate to report that both Dr. Christopher Pezzullo and I support vaccination and the education of parents that informs their decision-making. However, reporter Joe Lawlor inaccurately leapt to the conclusion that I endorse specific, previously proposed legislation that places requirements on parents who seek a philosophical exemption.

As I stated to the Press Herald, any legislation that encourages dialogue between providers and parents that reinforces the importance of vaccines and the low-risk associated with them, and positions the parent to make an informed decision, is worthy of consideration.

However, the proposed legislation went much further and, if passed into law, parents seeking a philosophical exemption would be legally required to visit a doctor, undergo counseling, and obtain paperwork proving they had done so. It also mandated parents to produce that paperwork to schools and daycares where the child enrolls. These additional steps create a heavy-handed and unnecessary burden for providers, parents, and schools and may have the unintended consequence of strengthening the opposition of parents who do not support vaccination.

Maine CDC will continue to do all it can to educate about the importance of vaccination because it offers the best protection against many deadly diseases. We recognize the critical importance of informed consent while also acknowledging parental rights.

Kenneth Albert, Director and Chief Operating Officer

Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention

From: Ginger Taylor [mailto:
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] Sent: Thursday, October 15, 2015 10:35 AMTo: Martins, John ASubject: Re: Vaccination story

Mr. Martins,

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We will amend our response appropriately.

However, the basics of our complaints against DHHS remain. Since the hearings in May where the large gaps in the vaccine program were openly discussed in the Maine Legislatures Health and Human Services Committee, your agency has refused to meet with us, refused to answer our questions, refused to respond to our pleas for help for our injured children, refused to provide us with the name of a doctor in Maine that is qualified to assess, document and treat vaccine injury, and refused to educate Maine medical providers on federal vaccine injury guidelines. Mr. Albert has simply sent an ambiguous email that seems to suggest that we should agree to disagree (on what I am not sure) and that if we want a response to our queries we should file a lawsuit.

Additionally, the department continues to make unfounded vaccine safety claims. Even in this press release, Mr. Albert claims that vaccines are "low risk." In fact there is NO RESEARCH on what the increased risks are associated with participating in the vaccine program may be. The CDC has testified before Congress that they have never looked at health outcomes for fully vaccinated children as compared to unvaccinated children, and the Institute of Medicine report on the vaccine program confirmed that no such research exists. No risk benefit analysis can be undertaken on the recommended vaccine program, because there is no risk information to weigh against the benefits.

So our open invitation to a public meeting with Mr. Albert stands. We will wait to hear from DHHS on when they are ready to deal with the complaints we have registered with the department.

Martins, John A <
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To:

Ginger Taylor <
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I will forward this along to the appropriate parties. Thank you for your clarification as well.

John Martins

Public Health Information Officer/

Director of Internal and Program Communications

(207) 287-5347

The Portland Press Herald has not corrected the article in question, but has posted a second article reporting that Albert has "backtracked" on his claim. http://www.pressherald.com/2015/10/14/maine-public-health-director-backtracks-on-vaccine-comments/

The Portland Press Herald is also screening out the comments on the article submitted by the Maine Coalition for Vaccine Choice, and will not allow them to be posted.

Rep. Bll Posey of Florida took to the floor of the House of Representatives and reported that Dr. William Thompson, senior vaccine safety researcher for the CDC, has submitted a statement to Posey's office admitting that he and his research teams destroyed documents that showed links between vaccines and autism. Posey further reports that Thompson has turned over thousands of documents to support this claim. The Congressman has called for public hearings into the matter and offered the documents to all members of Congress so that they may confirm the claim and join him in calling for hearings.